The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication.
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right... we were sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
We can be knowledgable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
I speak the truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older.
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.
For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
There is not much less vexation in the government of a private family than in the managing of an entire state.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.
The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.
I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of those contradictions out for myself.
Valor is stability, not of legs and arms, but of courage and the soul.
The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.
My trade and art is to live.
If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.
There is no desire more natural than the desire for knowledge.
The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.
Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity.
How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.
Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I.
The thing I fear most is fear.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.
I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
There is little less trouble in governing a private family than a whole kingdom.
There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.
Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.
Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.